Falling Into Place (dir. Aylin Tezel)

by Jack Martin | Jun 5, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 113 mins

UK Distributor: Bulldog Film Distribution

UK Release Date: 6 June 2025

WHO’S IN FALLING INTO PLACE?

Aylin Tezel, Chris Fulton, Samuel Anderson, Mike Noble, Olwen Fouéré, Alexandra Dowling, Rory Fleck Byrne, Juliet Cowan, Layo-Christina Akinlude, Michael Carter, Cian Barry, Alex Mason, Kevin Mains, Anna Russell-Martin, Kathryn Howden, Jerry Hoffmann, Eva J.M. Smith, Roddy Hart

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Aylin Tezel (director, writer), John McKay, Yvonne Wellie, Jakob Weydemann and Jonas Weydemann (producers), Ben Lukas Boysen and Jon Hopkins (composers), Julian Krubasik (cinematographer), David J. Achilles (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Two lost souls (Tezel and Fulton) encounter each other during a weekend trip…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON FALLING INTO PLACE?

The third-act breakup is a vital section of the typical romantic movie, for it shows the main lovers at their lowest, having been forced apart by unforeseen circumstances, whether it’s being caught out for a lie they told or a misunderstanding where it seemed they were into another person and so on, before finally overcoming their own set of obstacles and finally ending up together. Interestingly, writer-director Aylin Tezel’s debut feature Falling Into Place feels like an entire movie comprised of the third-act breakup, which depending on your tolerance for overextended romance tropes may be a little testing of your overall patience, but the resulting movie is a little more complex than that description may seem, even going to places where few romantic movies often skip.

It begins like a fairly standard romance, with two thirtysomethings – German-born Kira (Tezel) and Scotland native Ian (Chris Fulton) – crossing paths whilst on separate excursions to the town of Skye; Kira’s there taking a getaway trip meant for her and her now-ex Aidan (Rory Fleck Byrne), while Ian is visiting his parents, with whom he has a difficult relationship with. There’s an instant spark between Kira and Ian, as they spend a spontaneous night and then day together being playful and vulnerable with one another, as some prospective couples tend to do, until troubling circumstances put an abrupt end to their blossoming union before they head back to their lives in London.

From there, Falling Into Place becomes pretty much what I described earlier: a feature-length rendition of the classic third-act breakup. Kira and Ian each try and get on with their lives, with her as a budding theatre set designer and him as a struggling musician, but they clearly still harbour strong feelings for each other from their brief time together, and their lack of contact details soon drive them to deeper and deeper emotional turmoil (though even in this day and age, surely a quick Facebook search would have made all the difference?). So, for most of the rest of the film, you’re dealing with these two characters going through their own forms of grief for the love that they think they’ve lost, without much indication that a half-expected reunion for them is right around the corner.

And that, honestly, makes the film feel a little tedious to sit through at first. It’s one thing for all of this stark emotional expression to serve as the third act of the overall story, where most romantic movies often place such a bump in the road, but the fact that it makes up a majority of the movie does render it uncomfortably slow-moving after a short while. The pacing tends to falter as a result, to where there are a couple of points where it feels like things are finally going in the inevitable direction, only for you to realise that it’s not even halfway through the 113-minute runtime, and that there’s plenty more misery to go around, by which point you’re practically begging these characters to get over themselves and actively seek each other out, just so this romance can get its happy ending over with.

Fair play to director/writer/co-lead Aylin Tezel, though, for at least giving her movie some extra layers to keep things somewhat interesting during this extended period of misery. She and fellow star Chris Fulton initially share some very warm and likeable chemistry with one another in that opening section, to where you certainly are keen for them to eventually find their way back to one another. But as the film progresses, and the much deeper insecurities within them come crawling out as they struggle to survive both in life and in love, there is a tender tragedy to each of them which Tezel homes in on with an impressive focus on the right number of details. There are some really touching scenes as the actors convey their most worrying anxieties with genuine emotional force, whether it be guilt for a family member’s circumstances or trying in vain to reconnect with a lover who’s bluntly moved on, which the filmmaker clearly approaches with a certain degree of personal experience that makes what we see feel that much more raw and even realistic, a type of vulnerability you don’t see often in many romances, conventional or otherwise.

Tezel also taps into the best elements of some of her most blatant inspirations to create a romantic story that isn’t entirely held back by familiar tropes. The early scenes of her and Fulton connecting as they wander through the pristine Scottish Highlands carry a distinct scent of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise as you’re easily charmed by the ponderous conversations they’re having about their own struggles as well as getting to know more about one another. Meanwhile, later sequences that separately see the two of them, especially Tezel’s Kira, struggling with mental health and feelings of unfulfillment are reminiscent of Joachim Trier’s work, specifically The Worst Person in the World and its own idiosyncratic exploration of the modern strife of being in one’s thirties. However, the director manages to avoid her film feeling like an overly redundant copy of those films and their unique storytelling styles, instead telling a grounded story about love and loss that feels all too true to overly hopeful lovers in this day and age.

While it can often drag its feet before getting to the good stuff, Falling Into Place is a firm if flawed look at modern love that delves deeper into the psychosis of it all than most other films of its type, all while announcing Tezel as a filmmaking force to keep a close eye on going forward.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Falling Into Place is a firm if flawed feature-length rendition of the familiar third-act breakup trope, which filmmaker and co-lead Aylin Tezel adds more emotional and psychological depth to than most other romantic movies, even if at times it can test one’s patience with its uncomfortably slow pacing.